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It's been a rough day, but I'll spare you the boring details of caring for my father and the minutia that is taking care of my favorite cancer and dementia patient. Both collided in spectacular fashion today. Nathan and I reside in one another's head enough that we both had in mind to drink the Sorachi tonight, without speaking to one another about it previously, as well as to share with you our opinion of the beer. We haven't done a lot from Brooklyn, and that is nothing but sheer oversight on our behalf. We enjoy their brews, and we do have one more special one stashed, so look for that review to come soon. We also just happen to love the Sorachi Ace hop strain; it's featured in our award-winning homebrew, Sourpuss. It stands apart from other hop strains because of its fantastic lemony and lemongrass-y qualities. When you brew with lemongrass, like we do, it's a natural addition.
Let's get to Brooklyn's interpretation with this hop. This beer comes with a lot of hype. It's a saison or farmhouse style beer (currently very trendy in the beer world), that features the Sorachi Ace hop. Hell yeah. It pours the color of straw with a large, pillowy, white head. It is fairly hazy, which is expected in a saison. The aroma on this is very faint; I pick up tones of lemon, lemongrass, and straw in the nose, alongside some faint esters from the Belgian yeast strain. One thing I enjoy about many saisons is that they drink a little cleaner than a witbier or hefeweizen, with fewer esters clogging my taste buds and overwhelming my olfactory nerves. In other words, the banana and clove are much more understated in such a style. Taking a healthy sip (there may or may not be some residual head on my nose from accidentally dunking my schnoz into it -- huh? I wonder if beer will clear up that pimple that's growing on my nose?), this is a complex beer that is going to take me a few minutes to deconstruct. There is a strong lemon presence throughout the taste, weaving in and out of notes of cracker, straw, grass, and an ever-so-faint clove-tinged earthiness from the yeast. This is an exceptionally light drinking beer, despite it's 7.6% ABV. It has great carbonation and the body is quite light. It would make a fantastic lawnmower beer, but for its moderate alcohol content and that it's a small batch beer.
Overall, this is a very good offering from Brooklyn. If you can find some, please do yourself a favor and pick up a bottle. The lemon and the saison yeast work very well together in this. It's a very well-built beer. I've had my eye on this for awhile now, and with some pushing from Jay at Wine & Brew Emporium, I'm very glad we purchased this.
4.7/5 caps
-Jennie
So, reading Jennie's description of this, I'm more intrigued than I was from the get go. I'll keep this short and sweet instead of my initial game plan (because Klansman Jennie won't let me use 'water heads' and 'spastic mongoloids' as descriptive adjectives about my work day. Good job there, Hitler. The sheer dumbstruck look of the nitwit coworkers is one of the reasons I wanted to escape in both beer and literary adventures).
This has a cloudy straw color with a strong, thick, foamy stark white head. An interesting aroma of straw and lemongrass with backbones of typical Belgian yeast esters (clove and spices). The flavor on this is interesting. Smooth, balanced with the yeast esters with lemon. There's also hints of straw (having worked on a horse ranch, by straw, I also mean the sweet smell of it). The rest of the flavor, Jennie has nailed (hehehe, that's what she said). For a 7.6% brew, this drinks smoother than most American Adjunct Lagers. A creamy mouthfeel with low carbonation makes this a great warmer weather brew. There's a slight stickiness that I notice on the back end that I've only had with Sorachi Ace, it's hard to describe. It's a slight stickiness blended with a light numbing from the oils. Interesting how it pairs with the saison style. And, yes, spell check, saison is a fucking word.
4.6/5 caps
-Nathan-
Cheese pairing: A block of queso quesadilla
Food pairing: Ceviche
Music pairing: A sassy Latin salsa dance tune
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